Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Shaker hanging cabinet, North Sea edition, stiles and door.

Since I want the door to be as wide as possible, I found it to be the smartest move to finish the door first, and then adjust the width of the stiles to fit afterwards.

The door was planed to the same thickness as the stiles, and then I squared it up on the shooting board.

The original version of this little cabinet has battens that are nailed on to keep the door flat. Since I have taken the trouble to make blind dovetails for the case instead of using nails, I figured that i'd might as well attach battens using sliding dovetails.

At home I have a special plane for that purpose, but I didn't bring it with me, so I'll use a slightly different approach.

My idea came after chatting with Brian Eve over at Toolerable. He showed me a picture where he had done it this way, and I wanted to try it out myself.

First I made a set of battens that tapered slightly in width. I planed the narrow sides of the battens at an angle.

I then used the battens themselves as sort of a template to guide my saw.

A thing to remember is that it should be possible later on to tighten up on the battens if they become loose. So the taper on the door part needs to be a bit narrower than the battens.

After sawing out the sides for the door part of the sliding dovetails, I removed the waste with a chisel and followed up with my router plane.

I added a small chamfer to the end of the battens, to soften up their appearance before inserting them in the door and tapping them into place. This should also prevent any grain blow out if someone hits them harder with a hammer in the future.

With door at the correct width, I was able to establish the width of my two stiles. These were ripped to the correct width and the sides cleaned up with a plane.
I crosscut them what I believed was the correct length and followed up with the shooting board to make a fine fit. Somehow I managed to make them bot a bit short, but not enough to warrant making a new set.

When that was done I simply glued them into place. A few brads or nails would make it even stronger, but I doubt that strength is much needed with a cabinet of this size.

13 comments:

Now your just getting fancy. LOL Yet another joint I have yet to try. Your making me feel like a slacker with all of this joinery that I haven't used. Nice work though. That door looks great and should stay flat from here on out. Well done.

I don't know why I try so hard to use as few nails as possible, but I think it is in an effort to make the build last as long as possible. Probably a bit of a strange idea to a lot of people, but the process of building is really more important to me out here than the product.

I have seen a lot of Japanese videos on sliding dovetails and battens - they are all straight and not tapered. This is a joint I haven't tried yet neither but I am having a problem with the taper. It seems to me there is too much slop in the joint for it to be effective long term.

Hi Ralph.I think that I have overdone the taper a bit.Right now it is very tight, even tough it looks loose in the last picture. I think it is just the sloping sides.According to my father (who is a retired sloyd teacher), you should make them with a bit of a taper, albeit not as much as I have done.

The idea should be that if the sliding dovetail contracts, you can hammer it in a bit further and maintain the function. I guess it is more of a problem if the final place for the piece is dryer than you workshop. But that is mostly the case for me at home.

The other sliding dovetails I have made have been on table tops.Those were straight, and the batten was much higher, since I attached the batten itself to the legs of the table.Those were made with a router and the table saw.In my opinion it is a great joint for a table with a thick top. Since my workshop is not as dry as the normal interior of a house, the top will contract and leave a bit of the sliding dovetail sticking out. On the Barnsley table I made, after drying about half a year there were almost 3/4" sticking out on each side. (I trimmed it on site when it had stopped moving).

This is brilliant and confirms what I also have been learning about tapered sliding dovetail joints. I've been working on Moravian stools and I've stumbled on the same two key points. 1) It's easier to start with completed battens and then layout the female side of the joint. I think the order is different if the male section is endgrain.2) The sliding taper is easier to make better joints than a straight taper. The trick is to only add a taper to one side. This allows for more gradually adjusted fit that can create a tight looking joint that is driven in and takes advantage of fiber compression.In spite of this pedantry, I wonder whether those two little battens can offer any resistance is that wide panel decides to form a cup across the width.

I actually only added a taper to one side, I just didn't take any photos of it. I should probably have made a less pronounced taper, but that is too late now.Since I ended up making this wedge shape, I marked it out from the center line of it. Otherwise it would have looked really bad.

The large sliding dovetails I have made previously have been pretty hard to mount. I tried to lubricate both parts first, but seating a tight sliding dovetail some 40" long takes a lot of persuasion with a large hammer.That wouldn't have been a problem using a tapered dovetail.But unfortunately the design didn't allow for that.

I am afraid that I had exactly that same thought as you concerning if those two puny battens were able to secure the door. The original version has battens that are about the same thickness, but three times as wide. And they work, but I have my doubts on these.My idea was that they should have been around 1.5" wide, but good old fashioned laziness brought me to use the leftovers from the stiles, and they weren't that wide.My hope is that the door won't move much, since it was pretty flat to begin with. But time will tell.Thanks for commentingBrgdsJonas

I'm glad to be able to help with some inspiration on how to make sliding dovetails.

I hope that Rudy is doing fine in the workshop. Our dog normally won't stay in the shop for long, she'll just walk in and require a bit of scratching behind the ears. But that's actually OK since she is rather big, so I am in danger of tripping over her.

I think the whole secret with those sliding dovetails is exactly what you did: clamping the batten with the angle down, and using another block of wood against the other half of the saw. I have unsuccessfully tried this joint a few times before, but this time it went home perfectly.

As for the taper, I just eyeballed an angle , and when it was done on both sides, I measured the width and found that one side was just a little wider than the other. That side went in last.

I cut each of the female dovetails according to the corresponding batten, so I can't interchange the battens. I also just eyeballed the angle, both the taper and the dovetail angle (for the lack of a better word).

I am not quite convinced that these small battens will have much effect on keeping the door flat. But they shouldn't make it worse, so lets just see how it goes.